Mailpiece sorters are commonly employed by high volume producers of mail for the purpose of acquiring postage discounts to lower the cost associated with mail delivery services. Most service providers, such as the United States Postal Service (USPS) provide significant postage discounts for mail which is “presorted” For example, mail which has been sorted to a one level, e.g., a five digit postal code indicative of a particular post office, may receive a greater discount that mail sorted to a lower level, e.g., a three digit postal code indicative of a particular state. Hence, mail service providers include incentives for those who sort/combine mail into trays/bins which are to be delivered to a common state or post office. It is for this reason that mailpiece sorters, which optically scan the destination address to sort mail, are a cost effective and desirable commodity for producers of mail.
A mailpiece sorter commonly includes a feed module which accepts a stack of mailpieces to be singulated and scanned by various downstream equipment and sorted into containers/bins. More specifically, a single mailpiece is separated from the stack by the mailpiece feed system, conveyed along a feed path, scanned by an optical device to read the destination address, and subsequently sorted/diverted into one of a plurality of containers/bins.
To optimize throughput of a sorter, the feed module must consistently and reliably singulate mailpieces from the stack, i.e., avoid “double-feeds”, maintain a minimum spacing between mailpieces to optimize throughput, and minimizes wear/maintenance of the module components. While feed modules of the prior art have incrementally improved, there continues to be a need to improve their efficiency and reliability.
In view of the foregoing objectives, a need continues to exist for a mailpiece feed system which reliably singulates mailpieces, decreases wear/maintenance and optimizes throughput for high volume sortation.